Inside mj's head the Pennsylvanians sang on, even though the tape was off:

BLESS THE FOLK THAT DWELL WITHIN.

  KEEP THEM PURE AND FREE FROM SIN....¹

As a kid during the 1950’s mj had liked his hero-president, Ike, a lot. Ike was an older man in his sixties by then, bald as a Martian, saying really straightforward and sensible, very basic things in presidential TV speeches like:

...Throughout America's adventure in free government our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people...²

Ike promoted an ennobling ideology with effective rhetoric, and mj lorenzo appreciated the obvious quality of the man.

Ike had been raised by two staunch Calvinist-like Mennonites who had read him the Bible at the dinner table in the 1890s, just like Fred Waring’s parents would do ten years later, and like mj’s folks would do in the nineteen forties and fifties. But then the twentieth century’s ‘modernist’ drift in the churches came along, when so many of the country’s Protestants cut back on being strictly religious. And yet, in spite of all that modernism and post-modernism, Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, still, even as late as now, in 1974, kept singing their lyrics as if they still, in absolute sincerity, wanted to be just like Ike:

...BLESS US ALL THAT WE MAY BE...

FIT,... OH LORD,... TO DWELL WITH THEE...

"Were you in Hershey,” mj asked the Blackburns, “at the birthday party for Ike?" He looked at Betty Ann, then Bill. It was one of the biggest questions on his list of big questions.

"No," said Betty Ann.

...BLESS US ALL THAT ONE DAY WE...

MAY DWELL, OH LORD, WITH THEE....

Bill sighed, looking at his wife. "Where the horse shit right in front of the stage? You weren't there? On the rug?"

"I said ‘Hershey’," mj smirked, "not horseshit."

"No," Bill yelled. "Hershey. The horse! The horse shit right there," he pointed at the big colonial-style rag rug under the coffee table, the rug connecting all eight of their feet in the cozy Blackburn living room, "in front of thousands of people."

Suddenly the Fred in mj’s head belted a fast-paced march, and the glee club sang forte in unison, as if trying to drown Bill out:

Thiiii-siiii-sMAAAAHY Cou-ntreey!..  Laaaaa-ndo-fmy biiiiiiirth!..  (This is my country, land of my birth.)³

Mj pulled Fred’s 50th Anniversary program from his things, and found the facsimile of Ike’s birthday party program:

The  Birthday  Party

Produced, Directed, and Staged by Fred Waring

*

In  the  Arena

A  SURPRISE  PARTY  OF  GAMES  FUN

AND  MUSIC        FEATURING

THE  ENTRANCE  OF  THE  PRESIDENT  AND  MRS.  EISENHOWER

* * * * *

ICE  CREAM  AND  CAKE  WITH  THE  PRESIDENT

* * * * *

A  THRILLING  AND  AMUSING  GOLF  SHOW

* * * * *

" THE  SONG  OF  AMERICA "

A  Musical  Saga  of  Our  Country's  Founding

Composed  and  Scored  for  Orchestra  and  Chorus

by  Roy  Ringwald

With Lyrics drawn from the Poetic Works of

BRYANT   EMERSON   LOWELL   WHITTIER   LONGFELLOW   HOLMES   WHITMAN   and Others

Presented by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians

and an All Pennsylvania Schools Chorus of 1000

He handed the Fred Waring 50^th Anniversary Program book to Dlune, so she could see Ike’s birthday party program too.⁴

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7a:

(Personal letter wired in several separate installments to President Nixon at the White House by Fred Waring during the evening of December 15, 1972. Each installment of the letter would have been received immediately at the White House, but it remains unknown by the Secret Service at what time the President saw it all.)

From: THE GATE! HOUSE!

Shawnee on Delaware

Pennsylvania

December 15, 1972

To: Richard M. Nixon

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C.

PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

(FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY)

Dear Mr. Dick,

I wouldn't put it past Blackburn to play some Pattycake. He's been playing Bettycake up here... and now, JUST THIS AFTERNOON, these kids have gotten married IN MY LIVING ROOM AT THE GATEHOUSE.... Virginia did this and I'd love to get her for it, but she'd get me back, I know. So we’re going to have some fun, you and me. We'll get these girls. I've got an idea. We'll talk when I get there. But first, the concert. Are you ready?

Until the concert tomorrow.

(But you’ve got to stay calm in the meantime.)

Your friend, always remembering our mutual friend IKE,

(signed: Fred Waring)

Fred Waring

They sounded genuinely proud of it all, the Pennsylvanians did:

...Thiih-siih-smaahy cou-ntreey, Graah-ndeh-stawh-neeearth!...

(This is my country, grandest on earth.)

They were singing loud in his head and mj yelled: "Were they out in some cornfield or something?!"

"No, they had an inner... something. And Fred had been very worried about this. They had a guy that was supposed to be Paul Revere or somebody ride up, uh..."

Mj could just see it. Yes, you could see Paul Revere in colorful red, white and blue1770s garb on a horse.

"...to bring the surprise Birthday greeting to Ike."

And you could tell from the birthday party program that Fred had done a whole extravagant patriotic thing.

I pledge thee my al-leeeeee-giance, A-meeh-ri-caaah, the boooohld...

(I pledge thee my allegiance, America the bold…)

"And Fred, Fred asked them, 'I don't want that horse –'... Y'know!!!"

Bill did a super-respectful stagehand: “'Oh, we'll take care of it, Mr. Waring, we'll take care of it’. Cause Fred did this whole party for Ike."

...For thiihs is my coun-treey, To haaave and to hooohld!...

And now there was a triumphal fanfare of trumpets, tinny and fast like a sped-up Movietone newsreel. And then the band slowed with anticipation...

"Yeh," mj acknowledged. He could easily imagine it, every detail, with American flags flying everywhere: and well-heeled folks of northwestern European descent, mostly Protestant and mostly old-fashioned Calvinist, as a matter of fact; or the new kind, the modified, modernized neo-Calvinist in theology: all dressed up to beat the band. Surrounded by southern Pennsylvania lawns, all deep green.

Bill said, "It was all his money and everything. And the goddam horse, it was inside someplace, the horse came runnin' up, turned right around and shit... right up to his feet, Eisenhower's feet."

Mj giggled.

"On the red rug. The one we had. The red rug in the office at Shawnee Press."

Mj looked impressed.

Bill said, "The horse shit right there on the rug."

Repeating it got a laugh from Betty Ann, finally, and Bill laughed with her, laughing and getting louder: "Fred immediately went into a tirade screaming at the guy. Screaming! That's one of the legendary things that Fred Waring pulled, standin' right next to the President of the United States, Ike:

“'You have insulted the President of the United States, and I told you people to make sure those horses were emptied’!

“And Ike..., Ike calmed Fred, because Fred was irate."

"How –?" mj tried; but he was too broken up, laughing or crying or something, he wasn’t sure.

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7b:

(Letter wired to President Nixon from Mr. Waring, cont’d.:)

P.S. Now on further thought, Mr. Great President of the Great U.S., please settle down those Dick Nixon nerves of yours and be fair to Mr. Blackburn who is an employee of your own Mr. Great Twentieth Century Entertainer of these Great United States, we have to remember some facts now. Bill Blackburn is principled, exhaustingly principled here in Shawnee and Water Gap. So on more serious thought he would NOT play games because Betty Ann would get him back and I would help her. But check on Pat if you want. Yes. Use your damn Secret Service if it feels better. I would love to use your resources too, by the way, and let's hope these girls never get them. Well, excuse me, Oh Great President of the United States, I infer no innuendos but speak only for my own little self: I hope Virginia never gets them.

So let that be a lesson to you.

FW

Mj was baffled that Ike had the power to ‘calm’ Fred Waring. How could anyone in this world get Fred Waring to shut up?

"How good friends were they?" mj asked.

"They were very dear friends," Bill resumed, "very close."

"Well," mj tried; but it was impossible to figure out. Friends? With impossible, unruly, adolescent Fred, especially someone as nice and well-mannered as Ike? "They were both from Pennsylvania at that point," he tried, thinking out loud.

...What diff-erence if I haail from Noohrth or South!...

The glee club was considerably slowed down now. It carried on without instrumental accompaniment; and rubato, just as stuck as superglue to Fred's unpredictable conducting hands and mood. It was the classiest four-part harmony imaginable, with impeccable enunciation and blend, despite Fred’s constantly-changing emotions, which determined fluctuating volume and rhythm and everything else, second to second.

...Or from the Eeeeast... or West!...

"No," Bill said. "That didn't do a thing. Fred was one of the people that talked Ike into being president. Did you know that?"

...My heaaahrt is filled with love for all of theeeese...

"No."

"You didn't know that?"

"No!" insisted mj with a straight face. He’d heard the story from Bill, but forgotten the details, and he knew by now that the best way to get what he wanted from Bill Blackburn was by acting, just like everyone else in the neighborhood.

UP.... DOWN....

"Well Fred and Ike had been friends for quite a while already. Fred Waring went in and rented Madison Square Garden in New York and brought in an extravaganza, Bing Crosby, everybody. They were all staunch Republicans. They were tryin' to talk Ike into running for President. And Jacqueline Cochran, you know, the aviatrix? She flew this film, they took a film of it showing the people all: "We want Ike, we like Ike," and all that stuff. She flew it to Europe. Ike was Commander of NATO in Europe and Fred sent this thing so Ike could see it."

Bill continued. "And I'll tell you how close they were. When Ike decided to run, Fred picked the dresses for Mamie, picked her wardrobe for her."

Mj looked suspicious. "How were they friends?" In what way could anyone have found the man Bill had been describing, Fred, to be fit as ‘a friend’, a man so exasperating and ruthless toward so many decent and high-quality people? And how could a man of Fred’s temper-tantrum nature be picking presidents and ruling the world?

"'Cause,... Fred had met him when he was a general on many occasions, and they played golf together, and they spent the weekend together, they –."

"During the War?"

The glee club was a cappella and rubato now, both; no band and no exact rhythm; just as always whenever Fred wanted to zing home the real thrill of pure choral music:

I on-ly know I SWELL! with pride,

And deep with-in my breast...

They echoed:

 ...BREAST...

"No. After the Second World War. At Shawnee. And Fred –, you've gotta remember Fred had all these patriotic songs goin' for 'im, like “This Is My Country.” And on early TV he did all these big patriotic shows and stuff like this, and when Ike came back it was natural that they got together."

...I THRILL! to see Old Glo-ry, PAINT, thuhbreeze...

The Pensylvanians lit into a rousing march, a wrap-up coda, but it was tinny and un-hi-fi, like an antique Movietone accompaniment for ‘The Taking of Normandy'.

"You know, 'n Ike was a big hero!" Bill kept trying to explain without making any ground at all. The poor boy, young Dr. Lorenzo, just could not grasp how a paragon like Ike could put up with a pompous ass like Fred.

Mj said, "That was Fred's heyday on TV, too." Maybe Ike had grown to like Fred Waring by watching him on TV, like other people did, including mj lorenzo. Maybe Ike was as deluded about Fred Waring from watching him on TV, as mj had been.

"Yeh, but now: there's the thing. This is one of the things that killed him. Eisenhower killed Fred on television."

"You never said why Fred left TV. He didn't want a lifetime contract, you said."⁵

"No. This is one of the big things that hurt Fred. What happened was, Fred did everything but run Ike’s campaign. He really got that deep in it. He put a fortune into Ike. And what happened was, when Eisenhower won – this is really weird, it was an honor, but – it was disaster for Fred: when Eisenhower won the Presidency, he selected Fred Waring to go down to introduce him to the nation. That's how close they were."

Now mj truly disbelieved. "Where?" How could a guy as nice and kind and sensible and heroic as Ike Eisenhower find an idiot like Fred Waring likeable as a chum? Admiring him artistically from a distance was understandable, as mj had done, but who could be a buddy?

"Y'know, when they come down after your opponent, what's the word?"

"Concedes?" Betty Ann helped.

"Concedes. At the hotel. So Fred went down. Ike told Fred, 'You go ahead, and I'll be down, and I'll send a man down to give you a signal when we're on our way down’.”

It was heady stuff, presidents, and being around people that were around people who were around presidents. It made your mind race. How could these people like each other at all? How could they get along like ‘friends’ when half – at the very least – of the people in top positions in the world were assholes?

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7c:

(Personal letter wired to President Nixon from Fred Waring, cont’d:)

P.P.P.S. Well goddam it, Dick, I've thought about your crazy suggestion for a number of hours and have answered my own question. I'm passing on a photocopy of your crazy goddam Oval Office letter, along with this one of mine, to Bill and Betty Ann as a late wedding gift. It will constitute a Presidential guarantee, that is, your own personal guarantee to Bill Blackburn AND HIS EMPLOYER, FRED WARING, that every single one of the Pennsylvanians' Stage Requirements will be met to the letter, with no 'problem', Monsieur le Preh-zee-donnnt.

Listen, Dick, my man Bill has agreed to keep silent for thirty five years about that insulting defaming letter of yours. Don't worry. You'll be retired by then on the golf course in Capistrano, twenty over par as now.

Don't be ruh-DICK-you-lous! For my little girl, Betty Ann's sake, let the poor man attend the concert and Christmas party! Where do you get an idea like that? You never think of me, all you think of is yourself. Betty Ann's the greatest, you can't get any better, my damn fool son shoulda married 'er.  F

"So," said Bill, "Fred went down. He was waiting by this door, and they sent this signal Ike was leaving to get on the elevator. They ushered Fred onto the stage. Meanwhile, there was a misunderstanding. Ike had said to prepare for him to come down. And Fred went on all the major networks and started talkin' about the President of the United States, what a wonderful man Eisenhower was. And Ike didn't show up. For twelve minutes Fred talked, fillin' in. Twelve minutes. And the people are waiting for Eisenhower. What could the man do? He was out there. He didn't know what to do. He'd say, 'I think the President's ready. No, I don't see him over there’. And he kept talkin' and talkin'. And next day, people that didn't like Fred Waring anyway, the New York critics and stuff, really tore his ass apart."

Bill looked at Betty Ann, "Didn't you know about that?"

"It sounds familiar."

"That's one of the sorest subjects with Fred Waring," Bill added. "And the one thing you have to admire about the man, he did not blame Ike. It was Ike's fault. The critics said, 'This egomaniac’, and it was not that case at all, and it really hurt Fred with his public."

Mj was about to feel sorry for Fred after all, as usual. Maybe Ike had felt sorry for Fred too. Obviously Fred had a better side that did not get mentioned much when Bill was telling his tales of woe about him.

"So you asked how close was Fred Waring to Eisenhower, that's pretty goddam close, when a man selects –."

"Yeh," said mj, starting to understand something maybe.

Bill said, "There was a point when Ike used to call Fred about once a day."

"Fred was Mister America," mj said. He had the picture almost, or thought he might. He said, "You didn't have to belong to any one political party to like Fred. But it helped if you were Republican."

Bill had a different picture though. "I can see the two of them liking each other. Ike was very military. Fred was a disciplinarian, y'know."

"Oh!" mj agreed. "They're cut from the same cloth!"

"What say?"

"They are Boy Scouts!"

"Yeh."

For once in a lifetime Bill and mj agreed. They’d nailed it somehow. Fred and Ike were cut from the same cloth obviously, but what was that cloth? What was the common denominator? Fred Waring had been a rowdy, fun-loving, academics-hating Methodist hymn-singing Boy Scout raised in a small rural American heartland town by a hymn-singing Abolitionist mother, and a hymn-singing banker who ran off with a dance hall girl; and Ike had been a high school football hero raised in a small rural heartland town by staunch, pacifist, Bible-reading Mennonites. Was this the same cloth? Yes, somehow, apparently. God only knew.

Probably they were both Kingdom-of God-on-Earth Calvinists: democracy, capitalism and strict conservative Biblical Protestantism all in a single holy package, including the belief that America's 'saved-by-faith-in-Christ' Protestants were God's new Chosen People to replace the Jews (who had failed at their designated role of 'chosen') and to build God's kingdom on earth. And both men had risen up through the vast 20th-Century American middle class and come out on top as powerful, rich leaders in this mission.

It all called for a break somehow. The two wives got up and went to the kitchen, bored with men talking about men. And mj laid his head back and closed his eyes. He needed a break from thinking so hard, but his mind kept racing.

He saw Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians in a version of "Yankee Doodle" created by his own imagination. It was the same imaginative faculty which his talking with Bill and Betty Ann about Fred Waring had always over-stimulated: maybe even ‘to a pathological degree’, as some of mj lorenzo’s critics said later (and some of his own followers too, in fact, like Dr. Lorenzo’s ‘psycho pundits’).

The men began in unison a cappella:

Father and I went down to camp

A-long with Cap-tain Gooo-ding,

And there we saw the men and boys

As thick as has-ty puood-ding.⁶

Following each verse came an orchestral interlude, and then newsreel pictures of General Ike invading Nazi France – in rapid sequence, war-newsreel-style – with five stars on his lapels. The Pennsylvanians continued in four-part glee-club harmony:

There was Cap-tain Wa-shing-ton

U-pon a slap-ping stal-lion

A-giv-ing or-ders to his men,

There must have been a mil-lion.

One spotlight revealed Poley McClintock on drum rim, blithely flawless:

ddd-d-d-d-There I saw a wood-en keg

ddd-d-d-d-With heads made out of leeah-ther;

ddd-d-d-d-They knocked u-pon it with some sticks

ddd-d-d-d-To call the folks to-geeeh-ther ddd-d-d-d-duh duh duh.

That spotlight now sped over to Fred conducting:

Yan-kee Dood-le keep it up,

Yan-kee Dood-le Dan-deee,

Mind the mu-sic and the step –...

They got louder and slower:

And   with   the   girls   bee   haaan-   deeeee....

And the spot traveled to Betty Ann pushing flute and violin stops on her accordion-Cordovox. Then she introduced and backed up a tenor solo:

Then they'd fife away like fun (piff piff)

And play on corn-stalk fid-dles (piff piff fiddle fiddle),...

She took off with the fiddle-and-fife and waxed extravagant, sweeping keys and buttons, building to hugeness...,

And  some  had  rib-bons  red  as  blood...

All  bound  a-round  their  mid-dles....

Betty Ann in a flood of spotlights deliberately kicked her Cordovox amp to get the devastating Vietnam War boom-bomb she wanted. She did it a second time so no one in the audience would make the grave mistake of thinking it an accident, and produced another hellish distortion of musical sound, a nerve-grating, undignified, eardrum-shattering war ruckus. All of this with the hugest Ipana toothpaste smile in the world! And the dimples! And the tiny blonde curl in the middle of her little girl forehead!

And now the spot picked up on a five-year old boy running in, stage right. He stole music off of six Pennsylvanians' music stands and exited stage left running like heck. Fred Waring himself chased him across the stage maniacally, only to be replaced by a magically youthful, fully surrendered, playful, heroic Fred Waring dancing in swan-like graceful pursuit. The kid and young dancing swan-Fred slackened to a dreamy slow motion. The boy and the spiritually transformed Fred, now super-sped up, exited and entered among curtains and musicians far too many times to count. They zig-zagged zanily across-stage, then did it again lyrically, slowly. It was balletic anarchy with brilliant multi-colored spotlights chasing them, catching them, and frequently losing them again.

And offstage the voice of the very real, and the still very un-surrendered Fred Waring scolded in a mike: “You've embarrassed meee, your mother and faaahther, The President of the United States, Pat, Mamie, Betty A-ann, Poley, BillKenPaulMarkBecky-DockaSchubert the cat, Beethooh-ven the fish in Betty Ann’s fish bowl in her kitchen! and even Bill!!!.”

The kid that Fred was mad at was mj lorenzo as a boy, as mj fathomed from the details of Fred’s outburst.

Audience uproar subsided and the glee club intoned deliberately, tutti a cappella sans Fred, while the kid and the swan-Fred, surrendered to the ebb and flow of the universe, re-emerged one last time and exited, in strobe light sloooohw...    moooh...  -tion:

I can't tell you all I saw,...

They kept up such a smouuh..-ther....

I took my hat off,.. made.. a.. bow,...

AndscamperedhometoMUUUHTHER!

The audience expressed delight approaching pandemonium when the real Fred Waring emerged on stage red-faced, and bowed twice. And the dancing swan-Fred and boy-mj came out and bowed too, finally, to standing ovation.

¹  ‘Bless This House’, by Helen Taylor (words) and May H. Brahe (music).  One recorded Waring version of this hymn may be found on the Capitol Records Inc. cassette tape, “Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians: Favorite Songs of Inspiration,” side one.

²  Eisenhower, Dwight D., "Farewell Address."  Department of State Bulletin, February 6, 1961. Quoted in The Annals of America, Volume 18, 1961-1968, The Burdens of World Power, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.: Chicago, 1968; p. 2.

³  “This Is My Country,” by Don Raye and Al Jacobs, was introduced to the USA in 1940 by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, just as Americans were beginning to sense they might be called upon to enter (AND WIN!) the most enormous, even global, war in world history to date, the Second World War. The song, a popular hit, helped to stir patriotic fervor.

⁴  “The Birthday Party” for Ike was in 1953, the year he began his presidency, and celebrated his 63^rd birthday (he was born October 14, 1890). The birthday party ‘Program’ shown here is adapted from a facsimile of Ike’s Birthday Party Program, which may be found in the unusually thick and fancy annual program prepared for Fred Waring’s 1966-67 touring road show, Fred’s ‘50^th Anniversary Year’ in show business. That thick program was made available to everyone who attended a Fred Waring concert during the Waring road show that year. The big quarter-of-an-inch-thick photo booklet, far bigger and fancier than Fred’s usual annual program for the road show, though it bore no date and was officially entitled merely, “Fred Waring and The Pennsylvanians: A Photobiography,” usually was referred to as “The 50^th Anniversary Program.” Dr. Lorenzo possessed his own copy which Bill had given him. For anyone wanting a quick glimpse of Fred’s remarkable life and varied talent the 50^th Anniversary Program would have to be a good starter, partly because it contained dozens of excellent nostalgic black-and-white photographs. It probably can be viewed, even today, at the Pennsylvania State University’s Pattee Library, West Wing, 3^rd floor, in the “Fred Waring’s America” collection, a ‘special collection’ of Waring memorabilia (including his FW golf bag) which Fred donated to his alma mater, Penn State, at the end of his life.

⁵  Bill had told mj during the first interview about Fred’s not wanting a ‘lifetime contract’ with television. The subject comes up, off and on, throughout sections III and IV of Dr. Lorenzo’s Tales of Waring.